7 Easy Tips to Improves Your Focus
Each day, more of the world is demanding our attention. So much, that we it can be difficult for us to focus on our own daily tasks or even just take a break. In our distraction filled world, focus has become much more valuable and rarer of a commodity. If you can develop focus, you can become a winner in today’s economy. Developing focus doesn’t have to be all grit and pain, it can be quite simple. Here are a few ways that you can start improving your focus:
1. Capture Every Thought
If you are anything like me, I have a million thoughts run through my mind in a day. Our thoughts are obviously important and we probably wouldn’t get much done if we didn’t have any, but at the same time can be toxic to our focus. David Allen describes these thoughts as “open loops” because the thoughts continue to circulate in our mind. These open loops have been shown to tax a load on your working memory, which is where your focus and work capacity come from. Keeping these loops open will divert your focus away from your work.
Several years after David Allen had published his book Getting Things Done a study by the same name found that our brains are not well designed for recalling information. Similar studies demonstrated that “uncompleted tasks take up room in the mind”. Keeping it in your head is just a bad idea.
This is why he (and I) recommend that while you are working, to write down all thoughts that come to your mind. By writing down your thought you close the loop and come back and resolve it later without wondering if it will get done. This also means that you have to have a consistent place to store your thoughts and a time to what to do with it. I keep with me a small notebook to write things down and then once I am done with whatever I was working on, I copy into my Evernote account. You must be sure that you check this file often, otherwise you will not trust yourself and will continue to keep the loops open.
2. Dedicate Time
One of the biggest reasons that people have a hard time focusing, is because their own life isn’t focused. They don’t take time plan or set intentions for what they want to accomplish and if they do, they usually are too soft in their own commitment. They let other things take over their time. Focus has to be a deliberate decision. It has to be intentional. If you want to focus, you need to set aside what I call “Deep Work time”. I get the name from Cal Newport’s recent bestseller Deep Work. His book is about how our economy has shifted from one focused on time to one has focused on knowledge. In a knowledge-based economy, the ability to create Deep Work is incredibly rare and valuable.
In Newport’s book, he briefly describes the famous 10,000-hour rule study. You might have heard of it. Dr. K. Anders Erikson, compared expert violinist to those who were advanced amateurs and wanted to know what made experts, experts. What he found was that the expert violinist (and later athletes and other highly competitive careers) put in at least 10,000 hours or practice. There are many critiques to this study and many have found that the 10,000-hour rule isn’t applicable to every career. However, one thing that people miss is that Dr. K. Anders Erikson, points out in his study that what was most important was not the quantity of hours, but quality of hours. Furthermore, those who set a time to practice and only practice developed their skills faster than those who practiced whenever was convenient.
3. Organize Your Work Space
A cluttered mind is a distracted mind. And when your space is disorganized your mind has a harder time focusing. If fact, one study published in the Journal Neuroscience found that the more items within your visual field, hinders the processing capacity. Luckily this is probably the easiest thing you can do to improve your focus. You just need to do it.
One thing that most people forget when organizing their workspace is organizing their to-dos, plans and notes. This is a little more difficult, but just as simple. Your calendar just needs to be where you will remember to look at it. Your notes need to be in one place. Your to-do’s need to be organized and checked every day. It will be really hard for you to focus if you are constantly wondering what you should be doing or if you’ll miss something. Getting organized is among the greatest of gifts to yourself.
4. Get a Good Night Sleep
This is said a lot, but I don’t think we really grasp this. GET SLEEP! There are circumstances where this may be difficult, such as if you have a baby or in the rare occasions when something awful is happening to friends and family and you need to be awake. However, these circumstances don’t rule our life.
Now how much sleep you should be getting has been in debate and there is also a lot of talk sleep cycles and how long sleep cycles are a whole mess that makes it difficult to know how much sleep you actually need. When Chris Bailey conducted his Productivity Project he found that the best way for him to get enough sleep was allow himself wake naturally.
I love this suggestion, but sometimes it can be very impractical for me most of the time. This is why I like to focus on getting a better quality of sleep. You can sleep 10 hours and feel awful and then only sleep 5–6 hours and feel great. Here then are a couple of suggestions to get better sleep:
Turn off all devices 2 hours before you sleep
Have a night time ritual
Don’t drink caffeine after 2pm
5. Meditate in the Morning
The number one enemy to productivity is procrastination. Procrastination doesn’t always mean you are deliberately wasting time doing something else, avoiding what you are supposed to be doing. Procrastination can more than often be daydreaming about doing something else. So, what does that have to do with mediation? Procrastination is sign of depletion of attention and meditation strengthens your “attention muscles”.
Some people don’t like the idea of meditation and that is fine. You can it your breathing exercise because that is really all it is. Sit or lie down and then breath deeply in your nose and out your mouth just focusing on your breath. If your mind wanders (like mine does) that is okay, just bring it back to your breath. Do this as many times as you want. I would recommend doing at least ten. Doing this exercise gives you practice for when your mind might start to wonder and you need to focus.
If you still don’t like the idea of breathing while lying on the floor, go for a slow walk and notice each step you take breathing slowly while you walk or read a book for fifteen minutes. Either of these will help you to focus your mind but be sure to do it as one of the first things you do in the morning. The practice in the morning will put you in a mindset of focus.
6. Silence Cell Phones and the Internet
This has been said so many times that even I am tired of hearing it, but this can be a make it or break it point for your productivity. Before I move on I want to say that I don’t think the internet or cell phones are evil. In fact, I think they are tremendous tools to help be more productive and be more connected to people. But I also believe that we need to have it in its place. We need to be the master of it, rather than having our phones and the internet the master over us.
If you want to do your best work or want to have deeper relationships, you need to be all there. That means your mind is where ever you are at. With that in mind, when you are doing something important, put your phone away and turn off your internet. If your important work requires the use of the internet, plan ahead and either print out some documents, plan do research the day before. When I write, I close out of the internet. The internet is too easy for me to go down a rabbit hole of fun and interesting posts or videos. I have noticed that when I don’t print out documents, I write slower. Keeping your phone on and nearby, will keep the loop in your mind wondering “is someone going to message me”. You probably aren’t thinking that, but you do open yourself up to be interrupted and every time you allow a message to interrupt you the more you chip away at your “attention muscles”.
7. Take Breaks and Reward Yourself
I think this is something that we can all be happy about. Taking breaks is probably essential to getting things done. You need long ones and short ones. I take a break in the morning after class to work out. I take 15-minute breaks between classes and assignments. My most important break is my 30-minute walk and nap at 2. I naturally get very tired around this time and instead of pushing through it I have learned to go with it.
Along with breaks, self-rewards are important not only for motivation but also to prevent burn-out. Rewards should be healthy and help you to come back to work with even more vigor. One of my rewards is listening to audio books and sometimes I like to play an hour or two of a video game. It doesn’t matter what, just as long as it is regular, doesn’t begin to take over your life and is something you enjoy.
